


Idée Fixe

by SkyHighDisco



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, picture reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25981279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyHighDisco/pseuds/SkyHighDisco
Summary: James is drowning in inventive ideas. Richard is tired. Office is empty.
Relationships: Richard Hammond & James May
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Idée Fixe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ymas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymas/gifts).



> Inspired by that post.  
> Has this been done before? I feel like it has because it was too easy.
> 
> This one is for Ymas, her ridiculous talent and outrageously beautiful stories she keeps on giving us. Because I just love giving and because it was too easy. 
> 
> Shoutout to Chopin for musical inspiration <3

  
  


It is late, and the lights are illuminating the DriveTribe office space and many black lamps and computers astride white desks. The whiteness of the place is somewhat enough to keep everyone present awake, which isn’t much. It does include James, and he, engrossed in wishful thinking about a cup of tea, is aware in the back of his head of the presence of two more busy souls ready to pull an all-nighter typing away on their keyboards on the other side of the room and creating a monotone, splendidly pleasant white noise which May is following by swishy swipes of a red pencil on paper. They never make a sound, though, never stray a glance here and there, and if they weren’t blinking, James would’ve thought they were robots. As far as May is concerned – they aren’t even there.

He is so engulfed in his work in a way a composer would be while trying to transcend the chaos in head on a plain, too physical piece of paper which cannot possibly be enough to convey even the slightest chunk of that chaos. He is so focused that he completely misses the steps that approach through the open door of the office. Part of it would probably be that they are muffled by a thin, rough carpet.

The steps pass his desk and then pause. Obviously, it doesn’t put James off in the slightest as the handwriting seems to turn uglier and uglier the faster he goes, unveiling whatever James May is so enthused about.

Finally, a scruffy tenor pokes through his magnetic field of occupation and sneaks through its vents.

“Is that the pencil?”

James’ hand doesn’t stop working and his voice is quiet, and had there been no complete silence, he wouldn’t be heard at all. “Quite honestly, I could’ve used one very soon, so it’s come in handy just in time as you can see.”

Hammond has one of those trying-to-hold-back-a-grin faces. “You’ve kept the post-it note?”

“Yes.”

This time, Hamster does laugh. “You sentimental old bastard.”

“A toy truck for DriveTribe, though?” May, naturally, counters with a direct accusation.

He hears Richard make way for the small kitchen area reserved solely for making coffee and tea. “You gave me a sodding tissue last year.”

“Fair enough”, admits James and then smirks. “Although, I should be flattered then since mine was a one-off and you’ve given me a long-term tool.

There comes a gentle sound of liquid being poured into the mug — “Alright then. I’m giving you a twig I find on my way to the office next year, then.” — and then another.

“You’re not supposed to tell people what you’re giving them.”

“Maybe I’m double crossing you, ever thought of that?”

“And I could plant a twig and it would grow into a tree a few generations after my death so it’s still a long-term present.”

Richard shuffles over with two steaming mugs. “Fine. I’ll just go to the nearest dumpster and produce a used diaper.”

One of the mugs is put by the paper and a seductive scent of tea brushes James’ nose and a pencil circles to a gradual halt like a graceful F430 and guides the older man’s eyes up towards it.

Meanwhile Richard carefully sips his, looking purportedly indefinitely over the edge of his spectacles, but he is actually subtly trying to sneak a peek at the entangled web of rapid handwriting.

“What can possibly be so interesting coming from your mind for you to be writing so engrossingly about?”

“Nothing worth stopping”, a pause until the word is written out, “so you’d have a slightest bit of my attention.”

“And yet here you are, addressing me directly."

”Nonsense, I’m talking to myself. And that was childish.”

”That was childish”, Hammond parrots in a mocking tone, still quietly to the atmospheric needs of the office and not exactly investing energy he usually would in a banter. It’s confirmed by a following tired sigh. “Well… add it to the infinite list of being idiots the world has come to recognize us by.”

He lowers himself down on a chair on the right and tucks his head down to profoundly nudge May’s shoulder with it. He is tired. James can tell by the way his forehead lingers on his shoulder seconds longer than it would be considered casual.

“Did you pull an all-nighter again?” James says; his voice low, gentle and careful. The room is nearly vacant so there is no need for being wary with any fatigue/laziness-provoked displays of brotherly affection. It was an exhausting afternoon full of running up and down the building-slash-maze, arguing, introducing floods of ideas, intercepting the others’ and even as their hate panels are solid structures before camera objectives, behind them, they allow this farce layer to melt a little in order to not feel as trammelled. Maintaining an act can become exhausting, especially when tired.

“Mm”, Richard hums, but doesn’t move his head.

James doesn’t look over. Keeps on scribbling. Through the glasses, his eyes are twice their real size and they are completely fixated. “I don’t mind you falling asleep on me, Hammond, it wouldn’t be the first time, but just so you have it, if someone unorthodox walks in, know that I won’t have any remorse in moving slightly to the left.”

“Just… keep talking, keep talking, James…” Richard mumbles and he is faltering already.

James doesn’t, mainly because his feral hand keeps percolating savagery over the paper and the space left is growing thin. Richard’s head is twitching slightly along the movements of the arm, but it’s alright because it keeps him awake. If only just.

They sit in silence just so, accompanied by gentle sounds of plastic keyboard farther off and at some point, Richard becomes convinced he is sitting on a train, lulled with his head against the window, trotting through the British lowlands on a thirty-five-mile-an-hour train with rusty breaks and high chassis. Until he is fished back out onto Earth by James’ low, soft voice.

“I’ve been thinking about the title of this.”

Richard answers with a short hum through the nose.

“Well, you know how we suck at titles.”

Another hum.

“Well, this”, the sound of James crossing out a couple of words reaches loudest decibels in the room, “is the cookbook. And I have no such dilemmas this time around because it was always meant to be since the dawn of the universe”, a waltzy swish with the red pencil. “ _Oh, Cook!_ ”

Hammond huffs a grin. “I thought it was going to be something cynical like _‘10 recipes any idiot can make’_. That one has more you, I reckon.”

“How much of a cynic do you take me for, Hammond?”

Richard sleepily nuzzles May’s arm in response and gives a brief sigh, his hair getting tangled around its messy Al-Pachino-esque strands.

“Bugger off, you’re messing up my handwriting”, James growls without malice.

“Wouldn’t do much, then”, Richard straightens up with a loud nasal inhale and circles his shoulders; his neck was starting to hurt. How old is he again?

“Pencil’s blunt”, Richard mentions, and there is a bit of a whine in his voice. And indeed, James was beginning to have difficulty distinguishing his own words he had written and his hand had begun to hurt from excessive pressure applied on the paper.

“Mike borrowed all my sharpeners”, he grumbles. “About fifteen of them over time. Now I’m thinking I’ll have to borrow them all back.”

Hammond arches an eyebrow flawlessly. “You allow him that?”

“Not anymore.”

Richard chuckles; warmly and tiredly — quietly. It has a wheeze in it and the melody is as familiar and intricate in May’s ears as Chopin’s 2nd piano concerto, 2nd movement. “I can’t believe you’re that stupid. Haven’t you learned anything from your work experience?”

“I didn’t think your infection managed to contaminate the entire building”, James snorts, pencil finally slowing down and the room, the surroundings, Richard’s presence becoming clearer. Time starts to move again.

“Exactly how many people have you borrowed your sharpener to?”

The pencil is slowly brought to a stop. The tip is almost completely flat now, being pressed against the paper vertically.

James looks up. Looks at Hammond for the first time that evening. A clash of sea before the storm versus dark chocolate dip. He _is_ tired. Maybe not even completely sober. His white shirt is a contrast against his eyes and the goatee in the same fashion as the table lamps and computers are against the desks and walls. Two swipes of grey hair are sprouting out of his temples like silver flames and James is always more horrified at that than his own reflection in the mirror as the proof that they are getting old.

James doesn’t speak.

“You don’t know”, Richard deducts bluntly.

Wave of inspiration smashed against the rocks of consciousness, James folds the paper twice and puts it in his pocket. The pencil he deposits in a little mesh pencil holder by the computer. “I’m an old man, Hammond. You said it yourself.”

“Not old enough to misplace things and keep them there, Mr. OCD”, he claps a hand down on his shoulder and uses it to hoist himself up on wobbly, fatigue-hampered legs. “Welp, I’m off. I’m knackered. And you’ll do better to hurry along yourself because your car is parked in front of mine and I want to get home to bed preferably before next Christmas.”

  
  


The next morning, James is greeted by yet another post-it note on his desk, yellow one this time, sporting a familiar image of three balloons and yet even more familiar handwriting.

_Don’t want the world to miss the newest cookbook sensation_

_Happy Birthday pt. 2_

Covered under it, shielded from the light, is a small, cheap, basic metallic sharpener, probably bought on a kiosk.

James smiles just slightly, and it’s a real smile because the crow feet furrow the sides of his eyes and his eyes scrunch a little and gain a glimmer of life he’d had in about twenty years ago, when he was able to effortlessly, cockily, jump over fences.

He takes it with a hand that isn’t in his pocket and turns it around, as if it may hold another hidden message which jaunty Hammond somehow had the ability to set up. But it is just a plain tool. Meant to re-invigorate James’ tool of creation. No more than that.

But at the same time, it is so much more.

Now to extract a table version of a rubbish bin and James will have an entire Hammond-writing trifecta on disposition.

He isn’t giving this one to anyone, though. Not even Mike; he has another thirty people in this office to pester about it. This one belongs to _him_.

He puts it next to the pencil holder. He doesn’t put it on twitter. He doesn’t keep the post-it note. Not on it, at least, lest Hammond does mock him about being sentimental while the office is this dangerously busy. But he does put it in the toppest drawer of the desk. It’s where he keeps the most important stuff…


End file.
